And America's divisive culture, the Internet, the annoying questions he gets asked, and what he wants to do next (hint: not Batman).

Over the last ten weeks, Billy Bob Thornton has played Lorne Malvo in FX's fantastic miniseries Fargo, and it's been a brilliant performance from start to last night's violent finish. Malvo was a doomsday villain who strolls into the small town of Bemidji, Minnesota, to wreak havoc on a few of its citizens, mainly the show's protagonist-turned-antagonist Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman). It's Billy Bob as we haven't seen him before, a nightmare-inducing prick of an assassin who can kill you with just a look or a shotgun. We talked to the charming and refreshingly honest Thornton about his work on Fargo, life online, what's next, and much more.

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ESQUIRE.COM: Over the course of Fargo, we don't learn too much about who Lorne Malvo is. But we do know he likes a thumb in the ass.

BILLY BOB THORNTON: [Laughs] The thing about it is, in that scene, you're still not even sure. He doesn't care about that girl. She's just another pawn in his scheme. He does whatever he has to do in the moment. When she says that to him, he seems like, "Oh, yeah, that's a great idea." But at the same time you get a sense, especially when I walk out of frame, he's like, "Who cares?" I always thought maybe Malvo's not even real. Maybe he wouldn't feel pleasure or pain. If Malvo has a cheeseburger, maybe he doesn't even taste it. It's just something he has to put in himself to keep alive, you know what I mean?

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ESQ: He'll do whatever he needs to do. If that means agreeing to a thumb up the ass, that's what it means.

BBT:[Laughs] That's what it means.

ESQ: When shooting this, did you know how it ended?

BBT: We had our choice. [Creator/writer] Noah [Hawley] had finished all of them except for episodes nine and ten, so nobody knew including him when we started exactly. I think he knew how it was going to wrap up but hadn't done them yet. All the actors are different. They doled the scripts out a couple ahead of time and I did not know how it was going to end. I could've known if I had wanted to but I didn't want to know. As a matter of fact, I only read one script ahead the whole time.

ESQ: Is that so you can just do the character in the moment and not have anything influence that?

BBT: Absolutely. I didn't want to think too much. Things are going to pop up. Malvo's going along, doing what he's gotta do, and suddenly there's this problem that comes out of left field. Well, Malvo doesn't worry about that stuff. He just takes care of it. So I didn't want to know too far in advance so it would appear that I knew what I was going to do all the time. Malvo has no fear and has supreme confidence in himself. As an actor, I wanted the same thing. Whatever they throw my way, I'll just do it.

BBT: I don't think Malvo loses, ever. For me, Malvo is God and the Devil, he's the spirit of the universe. Ultimately his job is to come into situations. And I imagine he does this all over the world. That's his creepy, malevolent spirit. Maybe he's not all bad. Maybe he creates these situations that were going to happen anyways, but he leads people to who they're going to be. As he does with Lester, as he does with Molly. Malvo coming to town shows you who these people are and it shows them who they are. That's the way I look at it.

ESQ: Watching it I thought, "This dude is clearly an asshole." But listening to you speak, I'm thinking maybe not so much.

BBT: I think the word "asshole" is too mild for the things he does. It's pure fun time. While it's realistic and a "true crime story," it's also a surreal world we're in. It's a fairy tale in some ways. Malvo is this crazy spirit whose job is to take weak people and make them strong, take people who are too big for their britches and put them in their place.

ESQ: When watching a show like Fargo or Breaking Bad, I always think about innocent bystanders who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. The idea of that scares me. Does that scare you? Do you ever think about those things happening?

BBT: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Especially these days. You're afraid to go to a mall, a movie theater. We live in a crazy time. I've been told making this show, "You've played a lot of bad guys. How is Malvo different?" There's this weird misconception that I've played a lot of bad guys. I really haven't. And so people go, "Oh, are you kidding me?" And then when I start listing between 60 and 70 movies I've done, they're like, "Oh, yeah, you're right." I've played some assholes, or smartasses, but other than this and One False Move... Karl in Sling Blade is symbolic if anything. He's not an evil killer. He's a product of this crazy religious fanaticism. So it's the same thing with Malvo. If you think about it, the innocent bystanders are usually left untouched by Malvo.

ESQ: In one of the final scenes, we learn that Malvo has a case of audiotapes he's collected of the people he's interacted with. Was he just a blackmailer?

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BBT: He's hired to do certain things. He's on jobs, he's a paid assassin. In the process he loves the game of what he does. So he listens to these tapes like he's listening to a beautiful symphony on how this was pulled off. He loves to hear how things develop.

ESQ: That's weird and creepy.

BBT: Yeah, it is, right? [Laughs]

ESQ: Growing up, did you use a lot of guns?

BBT: Oh, yeah. They were all over the place. I mean I grew up in the woods and we hunted from the time I was a little kid. My grandfather was kind of like Daniel Boone. We didn't hunt for sport, we hunted for food. So I'm pretty handy with one. These days, I don't have 'em anywhere near me. Society's gotten pretty loose about that. It's not like the old days. There was violence when I was growing up, but it kinda got resolved differently. At least in my world, it did. People used to have fights. I don't think you can have fighting anymore.

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ESQ: There's no fighting. It's revenge. No settling things on the playground, it's "I'll let you think that I forgot about it and in eight months, I'll come back and kill you."

I don't know what bee's up people's ass right now, but it's really not fun. We're living in a dark time I believe.

BBT: That's right. We live in a very judgmental society. It seems like more so than ever, people are out to get each other. We're our own worst enemy. Politically, we're so divided. The right and the left are on each other's ass all the time. The thing is, we have problems elsewhere in the world, we need to be unified. Yet we're more divided than ever. A lot of it has to do with the social network. We're so divided and everybody is out to get everybody. As a celebrity or a politician — any of those people — they can't say anything. We don't encourage the truth even, you know what I mean? People want to hear the truth, but they only want to hear the truth so they can nail you for it. They don't want to hear the truth to use it for good. They want to know "Are you really this, are you sexist, are you this or that?" You can say one word or one sentence and lose your career or be vilified. And it goes deeper, like you said, the revenge thing. I don't know what bee's up people's ass right now, but it's really not fun. We're living in a dark time I believe.

ESQ: When you go to, say, a 7-11 or something, do people feel entitled to tell you what they think?

BBT: Oh, it's crazy. Even ten years ago, if I was walking down the street and some person came up to me, they were always very respectful and they'd want a picture or autograph or just to say hello. These days, they come up to you and poke you in the back and say, "What's up with that stupid movie you guys did?" Stuff like that. It's like there's no respect. I try to think of myself when I was 25 and first in Hollywood and if I ever saw Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck. I would be very, very respectful. That's gone out the window. It's also funny, how you can get some guy or some girl, who's just a partygoer. Say they go to South Beach or all the things in L.A. and they have a reality show and they're more famous than people who actually do stuff. That's the society we live in. When you think about it, you can be at a red carpet event and Anthony Hopkins or Robert Duvall can get out of their car, very well-respected actors, and the people cheer, "Hey, Mr. Hopkins, hey, Mr. Duvall, blah, blah, blah." But then if some socialite, and I'm not using any names, but you know who I'm talking about, they get out of the car and people go insane. Yet they talk bad about them. They say, "Oh, she's a joke, he's a creep." But they can't wait to see her or him. You know what I mean by that?

ESQ: Sure. It's the idea that people love to hate things. That gets them off.

BBT: I've read very few of these things, where people get in arguments back and forth with each other. And the only time I've read them is when I was looking something else up, and somehow it took me to this and I'd go, "What? Are you kidding me? People do this?" And then all of a sudden, I'm sucked in and I've read 75 back-and-forths. It's like you're on the edge of a roof, you want to jump, but you have to hold on... I have to pull myself out of this thing because I'm reading this stuff that's so vile that I can't believe it. The two things that poke out, right off the bat. Someone died recently. And these people were making jokes about it. And then somebody said, "Hey, have some respect," and they said, "Eh, fuck you, you go have your own respect." Shit like that. I'm like, "Are you kidding me? That's what we've become?" We've wound everybody up! We're making fun of each other and calling each other stuff and putting people down and I just wonder... with all this political correctness, it's like if a celebrity says something wrong, they have to come on TV and apologize. And yet people on the Internet can say anything they want to about each other. And it's just vile, poisonous stuff. It makes you wonder: Don't we have things kind of backwards here? The other thing I saw: There was this whole back-and-forth about how tall I am. I'm like, are you serious? It's like, "He says he's six feet and there's no way. I saw him in a picture with so-and-so and I know he's 5'10" and he was shorter than him. Why does he have to lie about his height? I think he's lying about his weight, too, I think he looks even skinnier than 140 to me. He looks deathly skinny." It's like that's what you have to do today. You can sit and talk about the height and weight of an actor that you're putting down anyways. So you hate my guts and yet you'll take time out, because what they really do, is they love you and they hate you all at once. And that's a dangerous recipe, you know what I mean? I can play Angry Birds for seven minutes on my phone and feel like I'm on acid. It's all of a sudden, I can't see anything, it's all fuzzy, I feel like I'm going to pass out. It's like, how do you guys do this shit?

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ESQ: If the Internet was what it is today ten years ago, that would've probably been pretty depressing for you.

I'm glad my crazier days in the public... I'm glad the Internet wasn't big like it is now.

BBT: I'm glad my crazier days in the public... I'm glad the Internet wasn't big like it is now. I missed that stuff for the most part. But nobody's immune to it. You can stay home the rest of your life, but everything they've already said about you is still on there. They recycle stuff that I've forgotten.

ESQ: Like what?

BBT: Just stuff that... I don't know. It's like every time you do a pre-interview for another show, it's like, "I understand you have a phobia, that you're afraid of antiques!" It's like, are you shittin' me? I said this in 1996. And you're still... Yeah, that's right. [Laughs] It hasn't changed.

ESQ: "It's still a thing."

BBT: How many more times can I talk about that? I've already explained it. I'm not afraid of antiques like they're going to kill me. I'm creeped out about a few things like anybody else is, but they make something out of it.

ESQ: Do you think you'll keep doing this for a long time? Will you be an 85-year-old actor?

BBT: I'd be happy to be an 85-year-old anything. But yeah. That's the great thing about being an actor. You can do it as long as you can still talk. Baseball players, unless they get a reality show or become an announcer, they end up selling cars in Long Beach or having a restaurant named after them. "Hal Johnson's Steak House" or whatever it is. And that's at 39 years old.

ESQ: Are you watching the World Cup?

BBT: I watched yesterday, the Brazil game. I don't know much about soccer. Soccer and hockey, I didn't grow up with them. I'm a baseball, basketball, football guy. For us, golf and tennis were what rich people did. We didn't really get into that. People like me couldn't get in the country club. I look at those things as recreation in a lot of ways but I have to say, I've gotten into watching golf more. I love the golf tournaments where the conditions are hard. I like to watch the British Open where the sand traps have those rock walls and it's always pissing rain. I'm like, now this is a sport. It's not recreation anymore. They're standing out there in the wind and rain and they all have the flu and shit. It's like watching Green Bay and Dallas in '67.

ESQ: Do you play?

BBT: Oh gosh, no. I've never even attempted it.

ESQ: You gotta do it.

BBT: I'd love to. I've always wanted to do it. I grew up as a baseball player and a lot of people say baseball players make pretty good golfers.

ESQ: Are you writing anything new at the moment?

BBT: Not really. I'm just looking at a few scripts. I got a few offers for things. So far, nothing really jumps out. There's still some talk about us doing a sequel to Bad Santa. I don't know if that's ever going to come together, but they're still talking about that.

ESQ: Is there even a script?

BBT: We've had a couple drafts of scripts that aren't actually done. We've hired a couple of writers who are working on some ideas. There's nothing concrete. So I don't know if that's going to happen. Maybe I want to do another one of these ten-episode things. It's a pretty cool way to do things. I love it. Maybe I'll think about that if there's one that comes down the pike. Other than that, just looking at some scripts and figuring out how do I make a living and do these good ones or how do I resolve myself in doing these shitty ones and making money. [Laughs]

ESQ: I always imagine that if you do three Fargos in four years, you have to do a Transformers to balance it out.

They don't really call me to play the mayor in Batman and stuff. I'm too old to play Batman.

BBT: Yeah, and it's not like there's big commercial movies that aren't good. I'm not some independent film snob. It's just somehow, I always miss the really good big movies. I always know about them when they've already been finished. I get offered the ones they don't make anymore. Like the $25 to $30 million studio movies, adult dramas and that kind of thing. They don't make those so much anymore. They don't really call me to play the mayor in Batman and stuff. I'm too old to play Batman. Anyways. Hopefully I'm going to find something good. I haven't so far since Fargo. I have three movies coming out. Two of them are cameos, really. I did a movie called Cut Bank and I did another one that's a bigger cameo in this movie The Judge with Robert Downey, Robert Duvall. It's a big Warner Bros. movie. And then I did an actual, plain-old cameo in the Entourage movie. I have two scenes in that.

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ESQ: You played yourself?

BBT: No, I thought I would. [Doug Ellin] actually wrote a role for me to play, where I play this Texas oil billionaire who finances Ari's movies. It was a lot of fun. And then I did this movie London Fields that I star in. It's one of those movies that people are either going to not know what it means at all — it's one of those odd, crazy-ass movies that I love. I loved making it, I loved everything about it.

ESQ: When you do something like Fargo, with performances that are so great, I feel like the people who have the power to keep giving you work should be calling you up.

It used to be 30 percent of the scripts you read, you could get through it. Then 10 or 12 percent of them were amazing. These days it's more like 4 percent is amazing.

BBT: Well, you know, they don't come along that often. It's always been like that but now more than ever. In other words, it used to be 30 percent of the scripts you read, you could get through it. Then 10 or 12 percent of them were amazing. These days it's more like 4 percent is amazing. There's just not a lot of good stuff. I don't know if they're running out of ideas or whatever. TV has more right now to offer actors like me. We'll see. I love doing it. I love playing characters. I sure hope something good comes up. I hope people lighten up. It's the entertainment business. They shouldn't take it too seriously.

ESQ: TV seems to be where it's at. You can shape a character over ten hours versus two hours.

BBT: Can you imagine having all those [Fargo] characters in a two-hour movie? It would be impossible. A lot of movies I've done, I don't think you can get them done these days. There's one more thing I have to say: This series has been such a great experience, the people have been so good, and [creator] Noah's such a great writer. It's been one of those experiences where everything fell into place so well. There's one thing we've overlooked in the press and I feel enough guilt about it where I have to say something. That is I don't think the Coen Brothers have gotten the credit they deserve. We talked in the press a lot that we're trying to separate ourselves from the movie as much as we can. And it's true, this story is its own animal. It did become its own thing. These characters became strong enough where you wouldn't think about the movie anymore. It really did what it set out to do. Now that it's done that, I feel it's okay to say if it weren't for the Coen Brothers, none of this would've happened. They created a genre. It's like where else do you find Frank Zappa and the early Mothers of Invention? Before they came along, that didn't exist. Without Steve Martin there might not have been a Will Ferrell. There are plenty of people who plug into the Coen Brothers. They get that dark sense of drama, irony, or whatever. But they weren't making movies about it. It's innate in them. But the Coen Brothers did it. They put this thing out there that a certain section of the population get. Without them, this wouldn't exist. So sure, ours is different, but credit goes at the end of the day to the Coen Brothers. They created this world for the screen.

ESQ: They put a specific world and culture onto screen. The fact that the most evil person in the show can say "aces" and we think it's funny — nuances like that are specific to them.

BBT: Absolutely. I'm essentially playing the character I played in [the Coen Brothers 2001 film] The Man Who Wasn't There, except evil. They started this. Let's say you got a blues guitar player who does the greatest blues album of 2014 and wins a Grammy, right? You gotta thank Robert Johnson, too. [Laughs]